Ron,

I've been told by some customers that I should describe our Dawn version of strip till as "field cultivating" 1/3 of the field. 

You are in the ideal location for fall strip tilling of bean stubble. While I am still philosophically a spring strip till person, there are reasons to strip till bean stubble in the fall.

Here is a picture of some strips made near Salem, SD in the fall of 2004 and what they look like in the spring of 2005. They are a bit "crusty". However as Greywolf points out that may actually be the sign of a great place to plant.

I have heard more times than I can remember the past few years an old saying "plant into dust and the bins will bust". And I am starting to believe it.

While I have always thought that you want to plant into moisture and not "dust" I have started to realize that what "dust" gives you is good seed to soil contact. Now if we can plant into a little bit of surface dust with moisture below and no air gaps/clods below and around the seed (which is why I would not plant directly over a spring knife slot) a bit of dust on type would be ideal. 

Our 1572 Coulter combo, or just Trashwheels alone, run very lightly, are good at breaking up the crust and leveling the surface where needed. The customer pictured uses just our TRashwheels on his planter, as I recall.

Here is a photo of what fall-made strips in bean stubble look like on March 30th in the spring near Salem, SD.

(Dawn Strip Till Spring appearance of Fall made strips in SD Bean stubble_0370 cutoff 3-31-05.jpg)

Dawn Strip Till Spring appearance of Fall made strips in SD Bean stubble_0370 cutoff 3-31-05.jpg (70KB - 159 downloads)